Glen Tate - 299 Days - The Community

Nancy answered Ron’s question. “Oh,” she said sarcastically, “your way worked so well, Ron. How many died? Three, at least. And there were bullets flying all over the place.” Nancy’s voice changed to her concerned mother tone. “Ron, you are brave and all, but you’re not a trained professional. You need resources. The FC has resources.”

“Like what? Tell me the resources,” Ron yelled. “Tell me, Nancy. Tell me.”

Silence. Ron was on a roll. He went on. “Does the FC have the resources to catch the Matson vandal, Nancy? Gee, who could have done that? Maybe the person who attacked Lisa Matson and her special needs son right before the place was trashed? I hope the mighty FC catches him—or her.”

People were stunned. They’d never seen mild mannered Mormon accountant Ron so angry. Sherri just glared at Nancy. No one had ever seen Sherri angry.

Clint started to talk, but Nancy put her hand up to him. She’d handle this.

“Well, Ron,” Nancy said coldly, “I can understand why you’re so concerned about security here. You have a lot to lose, don’t you?” She pointed in the direction of Ron and Sherri’s house, and then she pointed to Ron and Sherri.

“You know what you have there, don’t you?” she said to the audience. Nancy looked like she was about to punch Ron and Sherri.

“Tell us what you have in your house, Ron,” Nancy yelled. “Tell us.”

Ron and Sherri had no idea what she was talking about. They shook their heads. Ron finally said, “Huh?”

“Tell everyone about the food you little Mormons have,” Nancy yelled. “Oh, is ‘LDS’ the term you prefer?” she said sarcastically. “Tell us about the year’s worth of food that your Grand Pooh-Bah tells you to have in your home.” Nancy was screaming at this point.

Ron and Sherri didn’t have a year’s worth of food. They didn’t follow all of their church’s teachings to the letter. They had no more food than anyone else.

Ron was stunned. He could feel the eyes on him. “I don’t have any food. A year’s worth? Where would we put it?”

“I don’t know,” Nancy said. “It’s your religion, your fundamentalist religion. Your macho shoot-em-up religion. You want to shoot people rather than share your food.” She went back to the condescending tone, “Not very ‘Christian,’ is it Ron? What would Jesus do? Shoot the hungry?”

Ron could not speak. He could not believe what was happening.

“Shut up, bitch!” Sherri jumped up and yelled. That stunned the room. Nice Mormon homemaker Sherri just dropped the “b” bomb.

She started walking toward Nancy pointing her finger and saying, “You will not threaten my family. You will not turn everyone against us. I will not let you…”

When she got close enough to hit Nancy, Cliff stepped between the two women. “Calm down. No one is threatening anyone,” Cliff said.

“The hell she isn’t,” Sherri said. No one had ever heard her swear, even if it was a minor swear word like that. Sherri pushed the rather weak Clint aside and pointed her finger right at Nancy. The two women were about a foot apart.

“Stay away from my family and don’t attack my religion,” Sherri screamed. “Understand? Understand?” Sherri was shaking with rage.

Nancy stood there. Calmly. This was exactly the reaction she was hoping for from the fundamentalists. Poor Sherri, Nancy thought. She has been subjugated by the fundamentalist male power structure. She has been so subjugated that she was violent against someone like Nancy who was trying to help her be free from it.

Nancy went with the concerned mom voice again. It seemed to be working well. “This is the kind of hostility we don’t need here.”

Sherri turned around and walked out. Ron came with her. As they left, Nancy yelled at them, “People need to share now. We all need to sacrifice. You need to help the community with all your food. Don’t hoard it.”

Len stood up. This was crap. “Nancy, you’re way out of line. The Spencers are good people. I’ve been to their house numerous times. They don’t have a year’s worth of food lying around.”

“That you can see,” Nancy interrupted him. “That you can see. Their religion teaches them…”

“Stop with the religious shit,” Len said. No one had ever heard him swear either.

Three others stood up. One of them, Ken Kallerman the Fish and Wildlife Department biologist said, “We’re LDS, too, and we won’t tolerate this.” He pointed at Nancy and said, “Stop it right now.” No one there had ever seen Mr. Scientist raise his voice.

Nancy was silent for a while, evaluating the field of battle to decide her next attack. Clint started saying something but, once again, Nancy put her hand up to him and he stopped talking.

“You fundamentalists are free to leave,” she said to Ken. “We don’t need your intolerance here. Don’t try to leave with your food. It belongs to the community.”

People were stunned. People had been worrying about food because there was the $200 limit at the store, but they still had several days’ worth. It wasn’t like they were starving.

Finally, “Judge” Judy Kilmer, the administrative law judge who was tight with Nancy, said, “Nancy, what’s wrong with you? Are you OK?”

With that comment, Nancy knew that her control of the Cedars was over. At least for now. Judy Kilmer, who was on Nancy’s side, said what everyone was wondering. It was obvious that Nancy had snapped under the pressure and stress of recent events. Everyone was on edge with all that was going on, but targeting people for their religion, trying to turn people against them, and telling them to leave was too much.

Nancy knew she couldn’t turn the Cedars into what she wanted, at least not at this meeting. She had overdone it. Her intentions were good, she told herself. All she wanted to do was to prevent the fundamentalists from hoarding food and imposing their will on everyone else. But these stupid people weren’t ready for the cold hard truth, which was that the Mormons wanted to take over with their guns and testosterone. She needed to regroup for later, when the stupid people would finally see it.

“I’ve been up for a few days,” Nancy said, quickly deciding to make a small political retreat. “I’ve been working so hard for all of you.” She started sobbing, which was genuine.

She hadn’t had her depression medicine for several days either, but she didn’t think that was the problem. “I’m just trying so hard to make everything perfect for all of us.”

Judy came over and hugged her. “You’ll be fine, Nancy. Let’s just get some rest for you.” Nancy was sobbing, but smiling inside. They were falling for it. Judy was one of the stupid people, too, Nancy thought. Nancy made a mental note not to trust Judy.

Nancy had big plans and they didn’t include being slowed down by idiots. This was just round one.

Jeanie had two good nights of sleep in a row. Whoa. That was a record. She hadn’t felt this good in about two weeks.

She had her organic oatmeal and fruit for breakfast. The night before, they had veal kabobs with rice pilaf, which was very nice. They even had ice cream for dessert. Life was not bad at Camp Murray.

Jeanie hadn’t seen her boss, Rick Menlow, since they got there. She had no idea where he was. All she knew was that she was working hard to get the State of Washington’s message out to the people through the media. She was very good at her job. She was proud to help with the effort. Lots of people were doing great things—some of them dangerous—to make life better for everyone, but those great things had much more impact if the public got to know about them. Keeping the public calm and upbeat was as important, if not more important, than a load of some spare parts getting up I-5 to some water treatment plant or whatever the crisis of the minute was there at the Command Center of the Washington Department of Emergency Management.